28th Winter Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics 2012 IOP Publishing Journal of Physics: Conference Series 389 (2012) 012022 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/389/1/012022 Anti- and Hypermatter Research at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research FAIR J. Steinheimer1, Z. Xu2, K. Gudima4,5, A. Botvina4,6, I. Mishustin4,7, M. Bleicher4 and H. St¨ocker4,8 1 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA 2 Physics Department, Brookhaven National 3 Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973, USA 4 FIAS, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany 5 Institute of Applied Physics, Academy of Sciences of Moldova, MD-2028 Kishinev, Moldova 6 Institute for Nuclear Research, Russian Academy of Sciences, 117312 Moscow, Russia 7 Kurchatov Institute, Russian Research Center, 123182 Moscow, Russia 8 GSI Helmholtzzentrum f¨ur Schwerionenforschung GmbH, Planckstr. 1, D-64291 Darmstadt, Germany E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. Within the next six years, the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) is built adjacent to the existing accelerator complex of the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research at Darmstadt, Germany. Thus, the current research goals and the technical possibilities are substantially expanded. With its worldwide unique accelerator and experimental facilities, FAIR will provide a wide range of unprecedented fore-front research in the fields of hadron, nuclear, atomic, plasma physics and applied sciences which are summarized in this article. As an example this article presents research efforts on strangeness at FAIR using heavy ion collisions, exotic nuclei from fragmentation and antiprotons to tackle various topics in this area. In particular, the creation of hypernuclei and antimatter is investigated. 1. The FAIR Project The Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research, FAIR [1, 2, 3], will provide an extensive range of particle beams from protons and their antimatter partners, antiprotons, to ion beams of all chemical elements up to the heaviest one, uranium, with in many respects world record intensities. As a joint effort of 16 countries the new facility builds, and substantially expands, on the present accelerator system at GSI, both in its research goals and its technical possibilities. Compared to the present GSI facility, an increase of a factor of 100 in primary beam intensities, and up to a factor of 10000 in secondary radioactive beam intensities, will be a technical property of the new facility. The start version of FAIR, the so-called M odularized Start Version [4, 5], includes a basic accelerator SIS100 (module 0) as well as three experimental modules (module 1-3). The superconducting synchrotron SIS100 with a circumference of 1100 meters and a magnetic rigidity of 100 Tm is at the heart of the FAIR accelerator facility. Following an upgrade for high intensities, the existing GSI accelerators UNILAC and SIS18 will serve as an injector. Adjacent to the SIS100 synchrotron are two storage-cooler rings and experiment stations, including a superconducting nuclear fragment separator (Super-FRS) and an antiproton production target. Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd 1 28th Winter Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics 2012 IOP Publishing Journal of Physics: Conference Series 389 (2012) 012022 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/389/1/012022 The Modularized Start Version secures a swift start of FAIR with outstanding science potential for all scientific pillars of FAIR within the current funding commitments. Moreover, after the start phase and as additional funds become available the facility will be upgraded by experimental storage rings enhancing capabilities of secondary beams and upgraded by SIS300 providing particle energies 20-fold higher compared to those achieved so far at GSI. 2. The Experimental Program of FAIR The main thrust of FAIR research focuses on the structure and evolution of matter on both a microscopic and on a cosmic scale. The approved FAIR research program embraces 14 experiments, which form the four scientific pillars of FAIR and offers a large variety of unprecedented forefront research in hadron, nuclear, atomic and plasma physics as well as applied sciences. Already today, over two 2500 scientists and engineers are involved in the design and preparation of the FAIR experiments. They are organized in the experimental collaborations APPA, CBM, NuSTAR, and PANDA. 2.1. APPA – Atomic Physics, Plasma Physics and Applications Atomic physics with highly charged ions [6] will concentrate on two central research themes: a) the correlated electron dynamics in strong, ultra-short electromagnetic fields including the production of electron-positron pairs and b) fundamental interactions between electrons and heavy nuclei - in particular the interactions described by Quantum Electrodynamics, QED. Here bound-state QED in critical and supercritical fields is the focus of the research program. In addition, atomic physics techniques will be used to determine properties of stable and unstable nuclei and to perform tests of predictions of fundamental theories besides QED. For Plasma physics the availability of high-energy, high-intensity ion-beams enables the investigation of High Energy Density Matter in regimes of temperature, density and pressure not accessible so far [7]. It will allow probing new areas in the phase diagram and long-standing open questions of basic equation of state (EoS) research can be addressed. The biological effectiveness of high energy and high intensity beams was never studied in the past. It will afford to investigate the radiation damage induced by cosmic rays and protection issues for the Moon and Mars missions. Furthermore, the intense ion-matter interactions with projectiles of energies above 1 GeV/u will endorse systematic studies of material modifications. 2.2. CBM/HADES – Compressed Baryonic Matter Violent collisions between heavy nuclei promise insight into an unusual state in nature, that of highly compressed nuclear matter. Results from lattice QCD indicate that the transition from confined to deconfined matter at vanishing net baryon density is a smooth crossover, whereas in the region of high baryon densities, accessible with heavy-ion reactions at lower beam energies, a first-order phase transition is expected [8]. Its experimental confirmation would be a substantial progress in the understanding of the properties of strongly interacting matter. The CBM experiment [9, 10] as well as HADES [11, 12] at SIS100/300 will explore the QCD phase diagram in the region of very high baryon densities and moderate temperatures by investigating heavy-ion collision in the beam energy range 2–35 AGeV. This approach includes the study of the nuclear matter equation-of-state, the search for new forms of matter, the search for the predicted first order phase transition to the deconfinement phase at high baryon densities, the QCD critical endpoint, and the chiral phase transition, which is related to the origin of hadron masses. The CBM experiment at FAIR is being designed to perform this search with a large range of observables, including very rare probes like charmed hadrons. Ratios of hadrons containing charm quarks as a function of the available energy may provide direct evidence for a deconfinement phase. 2 28th Winter Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics 2012 IOP Publishing Journal of Physics: Conference Series 389 (2012) 012022 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/389/1/012022 The properties of hadrons are expected to be modified in a dense hadronic environment which is eventually linked to the onset of chiral symmetry restoration at high baryon densities and/or high temperatures. The dileptonic decays of the light vector mesons (ρ,ω,φ) provide the tool to study such modifications since the lepton daughters do not undergo strong interactions and can therefore leave the dense hadronic medium essentially undistorted by final-state interaction. As a detector system dedicated to high-precision di-electron spectroscopy at beam energies of 1–2 AGeV, the modified HADES detector at SIS100 will measure e+e− decay channels as well as hadrons [13, 14] up to 10 AGeV beam energy. Complementarity, the CBM experiment will cover the complete FAIR energy range by measuring both the e+e− and the µ+µ− decay channels. Most of the rare probes like lepton pairs, multi-strange hyperons and charm will be measured for the first time in the FAIR energy range. The goal of the CBM experiment as well as HADES is to study rare and bulk particles including their phase-space distributions, correlations and fluctuations with unprecedented precision and statistics. These measurements will be performed in nucleus–nucleus, proton–nucleus, and proton–proton collisions at various beam energies. The unprecedented beam intensities will allow studying extremely rare probes with high precision. 2.3. NuSTAR – Nuclear Structure, Astrophysics and Reactions The main scientific thrusts in the study of nuclei far from stability are aimed at three areas of research: (i) the structure of nuclei, the quantal many-body systems built by protons and neutrons and governed by the strong force, toward the limits of stability, where nuclei become unbound, (ii) nuclear astrophysics delineating the detailed paths of element formation in stars and explosive nucleosynthesis that involve short-lived nuclei, (iii) and the study of fundamental interactions and symmetries exploiting the properties of specific radioactive nuclei. The central part of the NuSTAR program at FAIR [15, 16] is the high acceptance Super-FRS with its multi-stage separation that will provide high intensity mono-isotopic